Homeopathy

I cannot remember the last time I had a homeopathic work-up done by either a homeopathic veterinarian or a homeopathic practitioner. I decided to use some of the money I received from Midge’s sale to do a work-up on Gel. He is not obviously sick, in fact, I doubt anyone looking at him would see anything wrong with him. I see things that most people would not and am able to correlate that with Gel’s particular “dis-ease.”

Homeopathy doesn’t recognize diseases by name, instead, we look at symptoms. Here’s what I sent to the homeopath who worked Gel’s case:

“Illness: when he was seven months old came down with what looked like Parvo (bloody diarrhea, vomited once). I didn’t have the test done to see if it was Parvo. Treated him using homeopathy and he was better in less than three days. After the Parvo incident, he was frequently constipated and was a poor eater. Both conditions are much improved.

About six months to a year ago, he flooded his crate with urine one night. He’s never done this. Around the same time, I found a chewed up bottle of Tylenol on the floor. Thinking he may have consumed some Tylenol and was in kidney failure, I brought him to the vet’s for blood tests and an exam. Blood tests were normal. The vet said his prostrate was larger than she thought it should be, but both sides were the same size. This hasn’t happened again.

He’s intolerant of heat; he gets itchier when it’s warm. He’s a little itchy, but not too bad.

Gel is a tall, lanky dog, almost solid black, with a light, frilly coat. He’s almost solid muscle. He’s not a great eater, but he does eat better than he used to. He tends to want to eat every other day or he’ll eat well after a lot of exercise. He much prefers my food over his.

Hates to have his feet touched! Otherwise, I can touch him anywhere without complaint.

All in all, I do not see a lot of chronic disease in Gel. He has no noise sensitivity. I haven’t seen him afraid of anything.

EVERYONE is his friend. His way of meeting people is to slam into them and then stick his nose in their crotch. If not allowed to do this, he whines and carries on. When meeting people, he acts like he’s been kept in a dark hole and hasn’t had any attention for weeks. He will get an erection if someone pays a lot of physical and verbal attention to him. He gets erections easilywhen stimulated by people and female dogs. He’s extremely sexual. When in the company of other dogs (i.e. at a trial) he pees on himself and his urine has a strong, musky odor. He’s like a billy goat in that regard. He doesn’t seem to do that when he’s at home. He does a lot of urine marking and often passes stool up on a bush or other high place as a marker.

He is okay with other male dogs unless pushed by them. He’ll show his teeth or snap before getting into physical contact. He’ll be extremely sexual towards females, even spayed females.

When allowed to do so, he’ll lick the cats’ butts to make them pee and drink their pee. If he comes in contact with the urine of a dog he likes, he’ll lick it and foam at the mouth.

Some of the above may very well be normal male dog behavior, but I see a lot of excessive sexuality in Gel.

He is not an excessive drinker. Likes to eat ice though.

Gel and I went through a lot of relationship building in the time I had him. We went through a period wherein he’d shut down (stop working) if I insisted he do something that he didn’t want to do (i.e. take a direction around stock that he didn’t feel was right). We’ve worked through this and he’s a fabulous stock dog and doing really, really well in agility.

While at agility trials, he’ll come to the ring like a tornado. Bouncing, barking, tugging, etc. – essentially wired for sound, but once we get into the ring and I set him in his start line stay, he’s all business and focused on me.

He can be quite vocal when excited. BCs, as a breed, are not normally vocal. He does not alarm bark though, just barks and howls when excited.

Except for the musky urine odor, he has no body odors. He had yeasty ears when he was younger, but they are fine now. His teeth are beautiful.

He’s turned into a working fool. As a younger dog, he was a party boy, in it for the party, he’d leave stock that he was working to go and visit a human, but now, he’s all business when around stock. He’s been a very slow to mature dog. “

If you do not know anything about homeopathy, you’ll think this is a very odd practice. How can the temperament issues, symptoms, etc. indicate anything other than, perhaps, Gel needs to be neutered? I’d rather not neuter him, not because I have plans to breed him again, but because I believe his testicles are there for a reason and cutting them off is not necessarily going to make him act differently.

A healthy dog does not have the excessive sexual symptoms that Gel is exhibiting. That coupled with a few of the other symptoms was what made me to decide to go ahead and get the work-up done. I often do my own work-ups, but I felt I was too close to Gel to do it correctly.

To do the work-up, I chose Mary Marlowe. I’ve known and respected Mary for a very long time. I was more than pleased with how she handled this case. I gave Gel the remedy she suggested this morning and now I will wait to see how (or if) it works. I am not going to indicate which remedy Mary chose because I do not want someone to read this post, think their dog is doing the same (or similar) things that Gel is and give the remedy. That is not how homeopathy should be practiced. A remedy is chosen based on the whole case: the totality of the symptoms. Rarely will a homeopathic remedy be prescribed for one symptom. This is a very different mindset from allopathic (conventional) medicine.

There are about 3,000 different homeopathic remedies available for use which makes for a well-stocked tool chest in the hands of a qualified practitioner. There is a very well written explanation of homeopathy, how it works on Wikipedia. I wrote an essay entitled, “What the Heck is Homeopathy?” which is much shorter explanation.

I am, to some extent, on the fence as to whether homeopathy works or not. In deep-seated, chronic disease (which many animals today are suffering from), no, I do not think it can help much. If it does, it’s only minor improvements and it takes a long time and a lot of dedication on the part of the caregiver. I do not think Gel is suffering from deep-seated, chronic disease. He’s not as healthy as he could be and I’m hoping homeopathy will help him. Time will tell.